A Baldwin County nonprofit that housed and served people with intellectual and developmental disabilities has been shut down by the state after a review found severe failures in its care — including critical incidents and deaths of residents — and families are being rushed into new arrangements with the help of a town hall meeting in Fairhope.
The Arc of Baldwin County was decertified by the Alabama Department of Mental Health on July 1, and the nonprofit’s facilities and day programs have been fully shut down as of a recent Wednesday, pending an administrative hearing the organization requested. The department’s findings, laid out in a letter to Arc Baldwin Executive Director Kathy Fleet, describe ongoing compliance problems that state officials say contributed to injuries and deaths among residents.
What the state found
“Enhanced monitoring reports indicated ongoing concerns with compliance, including missing documentation, staffing concerns, and continued deficiencies in medical care,” ADMH Commissioner Kim Boswell wrote in the decertification letter. Some of those failures, she wrote, “resulted in injuries and death of residents.”
The road to decertification stretched over most of a year. The department put Arc Baldwin on “provisional” status after a site visit in September 2025, then launched a “for cause review” in January that ran through early March, examining the agency’s operations after what officials described as repeated adverse incidents and concerns for the health and safety of Medicaid waiver participants. The review documented a litany of problems: failures to follow required incident-reporting measures, lack of administrative and executive-level response, inadequate supervision, failure to implement person-centered plans, document deficiencies, staff training deficits, nursing oversight problems and medical care noncompliance.
“Based on the recommendation of the Associate Commissioner for the Developmental Disabilities Division and provisions of the Alabama Administrative Code, it is my decision to decertify The Arc of Baldwin County, effective immediately,” Boswell wrote. “We hope for your full cooperation in the transition of residential waiver participants to other providers.”
Who is affected
Arc Baldwin operated housing facilities across the county — in Robertsdale, Foley and Loxley — and ran day programs at those three locations for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Many of its residents received their care through Alabama’s Medicaid waiver program, which pays for community-based services; as part of the decertification, those residents are being relocated to new certified providers.
The closure throws families into a scramble. Parents and guardians who planned care around Arc Baldwin’s group homes and day programs must now find new providers, new transportation and, in many cases, new routines for adult children who have lived in the same home for years. The department says its priority is “ensuring that every individual affected has the support they need to transition smoothly to appropriate sustainable services.”
The state steps in for families
Within days of the shutdown, the department scheduled a town hall to help families navigate their options. The meeting was set for Wednesday, July 15 at 10 a.m. at 372 S. Greeno Road in Fairhope, with representatives from the support coordination agency on hand to identify available services and help families secure placements that fit each individual’s needs.
“To assist families during this transition and to support continuity of care, ADMH will host a meeting for all impacted day program participants and their families,” the department’s letter reads. “Representatives from the support coordination agency will be present to help identify available service options and assist families in securing services that best meet each individual’s needs.”
The state Arc network distances itself — and helps
The shutdown also created confusion for another network of providers that shares the Arc name. On the same day the facilities shut down, the nonprofit’s parent organization, The Arc of Alabama, publicly distanced itself from the Baldwin chapter while pledging to help.
“We want to clarify that The Arc of Alabama and all the different affiliated local chapters throughout the state are separate and independent nonprofit organizations,” the organization posted. “With that being said, The Alabama Department of Mental Health has moved to decertify the Arc Baldwin County. While our hearts are with everyone impacted, we want to assure our families, parents, participants, and community partners that are associated with Arcs in your community, that this news involves only The Arc of Baldwin County.”
The state organization said it would continue to support Arc Baldwin through its appeal process and assist with non-waiver services, while The Arc of Gulf Coast Alabama would step in to help the day programs in Loxley, Foley and Robertsdale.
The state department’s own letter, however, said those day programs would not take place — underscoring how sharply the two accounts diverged on what services would actually continue. State health officials list other Baldwin County providers for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, including Fairhope Residential and the Cindy Haber Center, among the options available to displaced families.
The appeal
Decertification is not necessarily final. Arc Baldwin requested an administrative hearing, and the state’s decision will not become final until that process runs its course. Under the department’s rules, the organization had 15 working days from receipt of the letter to request a hearing in writing, or the decision would become automatic.
Such hearings can take months, and during the appeal the facilities remain shut while residents stay in their new placements. Arc Baldwin did not respond publicly with details of its appeal beyond the hearing request itself; Fleet told a local reporter she had been instructed not to discuss the matter.
A familiar pattern, a familiar heartbreak
Baldwin County is not the only Alabama chapter to lose its certification this year. In May, the state disaffiliated from a local Montgomery chapter after ADMH decertified it following an investigation — and residents of that facility were relocated to other providers, including other Arc chapters. The pattern is a sobering one for families statewide: the organizations they trust with their most vulnerable relatives are subject to state standards that, when they fail, fail catastrophically.
For Baldwin County, the question now is capacity. Moving dozens of waiver participants into new certified homes requires empty beds, trained staff and support coordinators who know the families — a tall order in a state where disability services have long waiting lists in the best of times. The department says it is working to ensure the transitions are smooth. The families, meanwhile, are living through the transition themselves, one placement meeting at a time.
The town hall at 372 S. Greeno Road was the state’s first public answer to their questions. For the residents of Arc Baldwin’s homes — people who often cannot advocate for themselves, and whose families trusted the system to keep them safe — it is the least the system owes them.